The 10 Worst Members of Congress

We weeded through all the crazy going on in Congress this year to come up with some top offenders

Plenty of good has happened in Congress this year, and then a whole lot of not-so-good, much of it having to do with that slow slide into lunacy known as the Tea Party movement. Here are some top offenders. PLUS: The 10 Best Members of Congress >>

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Joe Barton (R-Texas)

Joe Barton (R-Texas)

An amazing thing happened this summer as BP CEO Tony Hayward was testifying before an Energy and Commerce subcommittee. When it came Joe Barton's turn to grill the SOB whose rotten company was befouling the waters off Barton's home state, Barton instead abjectly apologized to a stunned Hayward for President Obama's demand that BP pay for the disaster the foreign corporation had created in American waters. Call Barton a private servant, because throughout his deplorable career, he has never much served the public. His is a strain of conservatism that gives preference to private interests over the public interest every time. And worst of all: Barton stands to become chairman of Energy and Commerce should the Republicans take the House this year.

Jon Kyl (R-Arizona)

Jon Kyl (R-Arizona)

It is precisely because Jon Kyl is so very smart and capable that he earns a highly coveted spot on this list. It is precisely because he is of such influence, precisely because he is the second-highest-ranking Republican in the United States Senate. Because unlike many of the lesser lights who wander the Capitol grounds like so many mental patients off their meds, Jon Kyl should know better than to throw the full weight of his powerful (or so we thought) intellect behind the lunatic effort to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution just to score points with the lunatic Tea Partiers. Don't be fooled: Kyl was spouting off not to actually accomplish anything other than to inflame the most vile nativist passions and gain cheap advantage over the complex and painful issue of illegal immigration. Ditto when he made the shameful and false claim that Phoenix is now the "kidnapping capital of the United States." Time named Kyl one of the "one hundred most influential people" this year. Congratulations, Senator, you've just made a much more exclusive list.

Joe Barton (R-Texas)

An amazing thing happened this summer as BP CEO Tony Hayward was testifying before an Energy and Commerce subcommittee. When it came Joe Barton's turn to grill the SOB whose rotten company was befouling the waters off Barton's home state, Barton instead abjectly apologized to a stunned Hayward for President Obama's demand that BP pay for the disaster the foreign corporation had created in American waters. Call Barton a private servant, because throughout his deplorable career, he has never much served the public. His is a strain of conservatism that gives preference to private interests over the public interest every time. And worst of all: Barton stands to become chairman of Energy and Commerce should the Republicans take the House this year.

Jon Kyl (R-Arizona)

It is precisely because Jon Kyl is so very smart and capable that he earns a highly coveted spot on this list. It is precisely because he is of such influence, precisely because he is the second-highest-ranking Republican in the United States Senate. Because unlike many of the lesser lights who wander the Capitol grounds like so many mental patients off their meds, Jon Kyl should know better than to throw the full weight of his powerful (or so we thought) intellect behind the lunatic effort to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution just to score points with the lunatic Tea Partiers. Don't be fooled: Kyl was spouting off not to actually accomplish anything other than to inflame the most vile nativist passions and gain cheap advantage over the complex and painful issue of illegal immigration. Ditto when he made the shameful and false claim that Phoenix is now the "kidnapping capital of the United States." Time named Kyl one of the "one hundred most influential people" this year. Congratulations, Senator, you've just made a much more exclusive list.

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Joe Lieberman (I-Connecticut)

There was a time when Lieberman's quavering sanctimony act was somewhat convincing (e.g., his blistering speech against President Clinton during the Great Blowjob Crisis of 1998). But not anymore. Oh, the quavering sanctimony is still there, but it is now but a fig leaf for Lieberman's utter venality, for these days he quavers not on behalf of the country but on behalf of himself. He has never gotten over the fact that his party had no interest at all in supporting him for the presidency in '04, and then actually went and knocked him off in the Democratic Senate primary in '06. Reelected as an independent, Lieberman's now about as popular in Connecticut as bank foreclosure. His favorite game to play now when it comes to major bills is to keep 'em guessing — Will he go with the Republicans this time? With the Dems? Will poor Harry Reid have to do the dance of the seven veils again? Memo to Senator Lieberman: No one cares for your act anymore.

Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska)

Once the coveted "sixtieth vote," Nelson, the most obstreperous Democrat in the Senate, maneuvered for a sweet deal for his home state to have its mandated expansion of Medicaid paid for by the federal government permanently in order to get his vote for health-care reform. This is a deal no other state gets. Republicans mocked this arrangement as the "Cornhusker Kickback," and Nelson was stunned to find that every last person in his home state was horribly embarrassed by his deal; he muttered that it was all a misunderstanding, and it was really all about abortion funding anyway, which is one of his standby excuses for everything. Antiabortion groups, once stalwarts for the senator, decided that they didn't trust him, either. Now no one trusts him, and he has been tarred with a catchy new name for the stupid thing he did, which imperiled the passage of health-care reform. In the end, Harry Reid found a way to pass the House bill without Nelson's vote, and Nelson was compelled, pathetically, to plead that his sweet deal be removed from the final bill. Because that's how Ben Nelson rolls.

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Charlie Rangel (D-New York)

When you've been in Congress for forty years and have ascended to the chairmanship of the incredibly powerful House Ways and Means Committee, which drafts all of the tax laws for the United States, are you to be believed when you say that you didn't realize that you were supposed to have paid taxes on that swank beachfront property you own? And then when you get fairly busted for other corruption of office and you vow to fight, fight, fight, what exactly are we to believe you are fighting for? Well, in the sad case of Charlie Rangel, you are fighting for none other than yourself. And you are taking your place in an embarrassing pantheon of black urban public officials who with discouraging regularity act as if they own the office to which they have merely been elected.

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Pete Stark (D-California)

Stark is the only avowed atheist in the Congress, and under most circumstances we'd be more than happy to celebrate this diversity. And Lord knows, his areligiosity has nothing whatsoever to do with our dim view of Stark. Rather, he has just been too bad for too long, and an aggressively dumb liberal is as aggravating as an aggressively dumb conservative. His idiocy fills volumes (it's called the Congressional Record) — for instance, in 1991 he said that it was because of his "Jewish colleagues" that the first President Bush had gone to war against Iraq, and more recently he said that Republicans sent soldiers to fight in the second Gulf war "to get their heads blown off for the president's amusement." Making matters worse, he is a dumb liberal who thinks he owns his seat. And why shouldn't he? His East Bay constituents have given it to him by ridiculous margins since 1972. Just how bad is Stark? In a House in which seniority means everything, he was next in line to become chairman of Ways and Means when Rangel got the hook for his pile of ethics problems. The Democratic members of the committee said no — unanimously — and gave the committee to Sander Levin of Michigan.

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David Vitter (R-Louisiana)

Now, it's one thing if you're a whoremonger and make no real pretensions to be anything but. There's even a kind of Laissez les bon temps rouler integrity to that type of rascal that we may even have to admire a little bit. He is, after all, what he appears to be. Edwin Edwards comes to mind. Remember a few years back when David Duke wrested the Republican nomination for governor of Louisiana to face Democrat Edwards in the general election? All the establishment Republicans panicked about having an actual sheet wearer as their standard-bearer, and so they all lined up behind the colorful Edwards with the slogan: "Vote for the crook. It's important." Now, those were the days, way back when slippery characters didn't pretend to take God's dictation.

Which brings us to the very special case of David Vitter, who is the worst kind of reprobate to be found in heaven, hell, or Washington. For Vitter is not at all what or who he says he is. A self-described "values conservative," the public figure of David Vitter that we are all subjected to is a pinched, prissy man who sits in judgment of everyone and won't shush about Jesus. Just a horrible bore who doesn't like for sick children to have health insurance, hates family planning, is appalled by gay people and gay marriage and brown people from south of the border and the United Nations, all of which in the Vitter moral universe blur into the same thing: grave threats to the tautly ordered no-fun zone that is David Vitter's immortal soul.

And, oh, how David Vitter does like to instruct on personal sexual conduct. "Abstinence education is a public-health strategy focused on risk avoidance ... by teaching teenagers that saving sex until marriage and remaining faithful afterwards is the best choice..." says Vitter.

Well, Aristotle and Shakespeare knew where this story was going centuries before any of us were ever born. Because of course David Vitter loves prostitutes. And of course he got caught. And yet he still wears his grotesque mask of righteousness, and Louisiana seems poised to be fooled again by the hypocrite this Election Day. Maybe they should first talk to Mrs. Vitter, who during more innocent times said of Hillary Clinton (and her husband's manhood), "I'm a lot more like Lorena Bobbitt than Hillary. If he [David] does something like that," Wendy Vitter said, "I'm walking away with one thing, and it's not alimony, trust me."

The Crazy Caucus: Michele Bachmann, Steve King, and Louie Gohmert

At this point, one can come to no other conclusion than that there are parts of this great nation in which a politician can adopt a position that takes us all hurtling over the Cliffs of Sanity without disqualifying said politician for fame, fortune, and relatively high national office. It's hard to know when we as a nation abandoned the goal of having as few crackpots as possible in positions of power, but the exotic fauna of the conservative movement has abandoned the underbrush for good and is now stalking the landscape unafraid.

"She's not going to call her crazy," said the spokesman for Tarryl Clark, a Democratic state senator in Minnesota who is trying to rid the Congress of the comic stylings of Michele Bachmann (above, left), the Republican who first got famous by gobsmacking Chris Matthews shortly before the 2008 elections by asserting that she wanted an investigation into which of her colleagues were anti-American. Subsequently, she was one of the first onto the Tea Party crazywagon, telling audiences of the agitated elderly about death panels and about how the Obama administration was going to make "slaves" of us all, and even leading a rally on the steps of the Capitol at which people protested the health-care-reform bill by waving pictures of Dachau. Not campaigning on the issue of Bachmann's transcendent nuttiness is tantamount to running against Rod Blagojevich and not pointing out that he's a crook.

A few degrees south of Minnesota, Iowan Matt Campbell is taking on Republican incumbent Steve King (above, right), the man who has never met an Obama conspiracy he didn't love. It was King who brought birtherism to the floor of the House. It was King who accused the White House of serving "ACORN cookies" at a social event. It was King who joined Bachmann in arguing that $10 billion intended to save the jobs of 160,000 teachers around the country was actually "money laundering" on behalf of the teachers' unions. And it was King who told the world that President Obama has a "mechanism that favors the black person."

"King insists on name-calling and divisive politics, and I don't think that plays well with western Iowa," Campbell says. Alas, we shall have to see about that. The odds are not good, however.

Moving even farther south and even deeper into the dementosphere, we find Louie Gohmert (above, center), the representative from the First District in Texas, and believe us when we tell you, Gohmert makes Steve King look like Cicero and Michele Bachmann like Margaret Thatcher. A characteristic Gohmert speech on the House floor during a debate on the military's Don't Ask — Don't Tell policy had Gohmert raving about bestiality, necrophilia, and voting for a black man. Most often, it seems as though he is unaware of his surroundings, as if maybe Louie doesn't realize that he is in the Congress. As yet, none of his fellow representatives have seen fit to throw a net over him, so Gohmert now has moved on famously to warn us about "terror babies" — infants born here to Al Qaeda operatives who will use their automatic citizenship to attack us down the line.